


I Bloom Just for You

by aliatori



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, doctor!Luna, florist!Gladio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 07:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19330009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliatori/pseuds/aliatori
Summary: Luna decides if she was waiting for a sign, she has heard it, loud and clear.





	I Bloom Just for You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raidelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raidelle/gifts).



> A gift for the wonderful raidelle, who requested Gladluna flower shop AU fluff.

It starts with a sylleblossom.

More accurately, it starts with Luna visiting the only florist in Insomnia known to import flowers from other locales like Tenebrae or Galahd. It’s been an absolute nightmare of a week in the ER of Lucis General, and Luna wants… no, _needs_ to take a moment to enjoy the simple pleasures in life.

Such as ordering a flower arrangement that reminds her of a home she hasn’t gotten to visit in years.

Luna parks her car, steps out, and regards the exterior of Amicitia Arrangements. It’s located in the upscale part of downtown, so like all the other surrounding buildings, it has a sizable striped awning and a charming adobe brick front. She smooths out her skirt—a meeting with the Board of Internal Medicine today and no time to change after means she’s a little overdressed for the occasion, but better to be overdressed than under—and heads inside.

The interior explodes into a lush, colourful paradise, complete with a pervasive yet pleasant floral smell. All visible surfaces are lined with various pots and planters, some with greenery and some with more decorative flowers. There’s a walk-in refrigerator tucked into the back left corner bursting with pre-made arrangements, and an exquisite, miniature tea bar adjacent to the counter. Right. Luna remembers reading in reviews that this is a combination flower and tea shop.

“Hey! How’s it going?”

Luna lifts her eyes to find a massive, tattooed, _incredibly_ handsome man in a too-small green apron smiling at her from behind the counter. His long, dark hair is pulled back into a bun, exposing the shaved sides of his head. As Luna inches toward the counter, he picks up a pair of glasses with thick amber frames and settles them on his face.

“I’m well, and yourself?” Luna asks, remembering the basics of how conversation is supposed to work.

“Good, good. Another day. What can I do for you?”

After pausing for a moment and censoring the various steamy scenarios that spring to mind unbidden, Luna smiles. “I was hoping to place an order for a flower arrangement. The conundrum is I’d like sylleblossoms to feature as the predominant element of the arrangement,” she explains, hands clasped in front of her.

“Tenebraen flower, right? Been a while since we’ve had a request for that, but sure, that’s no problem,” the man says, crossing arms inked with hundreds of feathers over his broad chest. “Any special occasion?”

“For pleasure only, so, I’m afraid not,” Luna says.

The man grins, and unless Luna is projecting, there’s some heat in the expression. “Who says ‘just because’ ain’t a special occasion?” he asks. Without waiting for a response from Luna, he continues. “We can get that done for you. Gonna take about two weeks because of the delivery time for the sylleblossoms. We have a binder full of pre-designed arrangements to choose from, or we can come up with something custom together.”

Luna decides she could listen to the rich, deep bass of his voice forever, so she endeavors to keep him talking. “Let’s discuss a custom option, please.”

After a pause where the man—Gladiolus, she learns, though she’s instructed to call him Gladio—makes her a delightful cup of white jade tea, they spend the better part of the next hour discussing the details of the arrangement. Gladio not only makes a great cup of tea, he’s a fair hand at drawing, and the conceptual sketch he eventually presents her is perfect.

“See you in a couple weeks, then…” Gladio pauses to glance at the order form she filled out. “Lunafreya.”

“’Luna’ suits me fine.”

* * *

Somewhere along the two week wait, Luna realizes her anticipation has shifted from receiving the finished product to seeing Gladio again. Thankfully, her career as a doctor leaves little room for daydreaming during working hours, which are many and long.

But when she’s not working, when her mind is allowed to wander…

She can’t stop thinking about him. Every preconceived notion she’d have about someone who looked the way he did was thrown out of the window within minutes of conversation. Kind yet blunt, respectful yet honest, warm and personable… Perhaps it had all been a customer service front. After all, Amicitia Arrangements has nothing but five star reviews on various websites dedicated to rating businesses.

But perhaps it wasn’t.

Luna counts down the days until she can find out for certain.

* * *

When Luna arrives, having sped to the flower shop upon receiving an email notification that her arrangement is available for pickup, she can barely contain her excitement.

The excitement deflates like a leftover balloon from a birthday party when she enters the shop and sees a different staff member behind the counter. Judging from their similar hair and eye colour, Luna guesses she’s a relation of Gladio’s, but she struggles to muster her polite smile as she approaches. Though she’s made her career in medicine, Luna also has an unwavering spiritual side, a belief in fate, and maybe… maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

“Good afternoon. I’m here to pick up my arrangement. The order should be under the last name Nox Fleuret,” Luna explains.

“Oh, yup, it was finished this morning. Give me a sec!”

The girl vanishes and reappears with a towering vase of flowers. It must be heavy, but she doesn’t struggle with the weight at all. The vase is a beautiful, milky sapphire, decorated with a silver ribbon, and sylleblossoms explode from the container, accented with some leafy greenery and other choice flowers.

“You okay to get it out to the car?” the girl asks with a smile.

“Of course. Thank you so much, it’s beautiful,” Luna says, some of her disappointment at not seeing Gladio alleviated by the beauty of the arrangement. There’s a space cleared on her dining room table for it already.

“No problem! Have a great day!”

While Luna secures the arrangement in her front seat, she notices a tiny card. Curious, she pulls it from the side of the vase and opens the envelope. The card appears to be a generic thank you note until she flips it over to the other side, where she finds a handwritten note in bold ink, the text of which sets her heart racing in a way she hasn’t felt in years.

_Here’s to pleasure being a special occasion. Enjoy the flowers. -Gladio_

Luna decides if she was waiting for a sign, she has heard it, loud and clear.

* * *

Following through on said sign proves more difficult than Luna anticipated. Her work remains her priority, and the insane week becomes an insane month. For a time, she sleeps at the hospital more than she sleeps at her house, and there’s even a helicopter ride to a neighboring hospital for an emergency surgery that lasted nine hours. However, during the few moments of consciousness after she collapses in bed, Luna keeps thinking of the note.

On her first day off in a month and a half, her first stop (after a long, hot bath complete with a lavender bath bomb) is Amicitia Arrangements.

“Hey there, Luna,” a familiar bass says.

Gladio. Luna’s not inexperienced in matters of the heart, but Gladio’s greeting causes her heart to skip several beats in quick succession. She can’t very well defibrillate herself to get it back in working order, so she takes several deep breaths, drawing on her years of training to stay calm in a crisis. His warm, welcoming smile melts something deep inside her, and the warmth spreads all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Gladio. How have you been?”

How did she get beside the counter so quickly? No matter, as it brings her close enough to smell the spicy musk of Gladio’s cologne beneath the general floral scent. In a rare moment of selfishness, Luna is glad the shop is devoid of customers aside from herself.

“Been good but busy. Sorry I missed you when you picked up your arrangement. The flower shop is the family business and my full time gig, but I’m a volunteer firefighter on the side, and… yeah, fires don’t exactly wait,” Gladio explains.

 _Of course_ he’s a volunteer firefighter. He’s straight out of a romance novel, like the many volumes dashed in a secret box under her bed. It’s… unbelievable.

“Oh my. You must be quite busy indeed,” is what Luna actually says, trying desperately to ignore her entire nervous system kicking into overdrive. Many of her past relationships have failed because of demanding schedules, but from the sounds of it, Gladio understands all too well what it means for time to be a precious resource.

“Yeah, but I like it that way. If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do?”

“I’m a doctor. Emergency medical specialist, if you’d like a more specific answer.”

Gladio gives a low whistle, and unless Luna’s imagination is running wild again, there’s a hefty dose of admiration in his gorgeous amber eyes. “Wow. That’s really impressive. Do you enjoy it?”

“For now, yes, I enjoy it very much. Someday I might transition into family medicine, but for now… I’m young and have the energy to maintain the grueling schedule required.” Somehow, Gladio has her talking about herself, a rare feat.

“If you’re anything like me, doesn’t leave a whole lotta room for a social life,” Gladio says.

Does that mean he doesn’t have any current romantic partners? Luna almost asks, then decorum gets the better of her. She makes a self-deprecating wave of her hand. “It doesn’t. I’m afraid my calendar is rather empty of social functions aside from various work obligations.” There. That’s as obvious as she’s comfortable making it.

“Same.”

Their eyes meet, and for a shining moment, Luna thinks Gladio’s about to ask her if she has time to add a non-obligatory appointment to her calendar. She could look into his eyes forever, she thinks, and never tire of it.

“So… here for more sylleblossoms?” Gladio asks, breaking the silence.

Luna keeps a carefully neutral expression. Perhaps now wasn’t the right moment; Gladio could have any number of personal circumstances in the background she’s unaware of. “Yes. Yes, of course. Would you mind designing another arrangement for me?”

She’s content to watch him work, to follow the smooth movements of a tattooed arm across the empty page of a sketchbook… for now.

* * *

Luna has never stayed content for long.

She tries _everything_ short of showing up to Amicitia Arrangements in sheer lingerie with a bottle of wine. A phone number exchange, nightly texts, meeting for coffee in the wee hours of the night when Luna’s on night shift and Gladio’s on call, multiple expensive flower arrangements, and long discussions in the shop over steaming cups of tea.

He’s perfect. He’s perfect—and he _knows_ he’s perfect, if his casual yet endearing confidence is anything to judge by— and Luna very much wants to pursue a romantic relationship with him, despite both of their nigh impossible schedules. But… for whatever reason, she can’t bring herself to _ask_. Her detractors have often called her ‘pushy’ and ‘uncompromising’ when pursuing her goals, and normally the criticism doesn’t bother her, but she can’t bear the thought of _Gladio_ thinking it of her.

Luckily, she has one final idea.

* * *

It ends (or rather, begins again) with a bouquet of gladiolus flowers.

Luna summons every ounce of her confidence before walking into Amicitia Arrangements. She knows Gladio will be there instead of Iris—who Gladio introduced as his sister during one visit to the shop—because of their texts from the previous night. At this point, though her living room and kitchen are now overflowing with gorgeous flower arrangements, Luna intends to place one more order.

After a hug in which Luna finds it all too difficult to let go, Gladio makes her favourite white jade tea without asking, Luna takes a seat on her favourite stool, and they converse in the too-familiar way Luna enjoys so much.

“You realize you’re payin’ for my next vacation at this point, right?” Gladio says, leaning on the counter with one tattooed arm.

 _A price I’d gladly pay._ “I believe you’re earning your next vacation, as my fragrant, floral apartment can now attest to. Speaking of which… I did come here for a purpose.”

“Did you now?” Gladio asks with a slow grin.

“Yes,” Luna replies, doing her best to exude composure. “I’d like to order a bouquet of gladiolus flowers. If you still have them, I’d prefer the yellow and orange variety.”

“Ah, the Jester. One of my favourites,” Gladio says, winking. “And we even have them in stock. Gimme a few.”

Luna knows they’re one of his favourites because she asked Iris, who rolled her eyes and explained that _naturally_ Gladio’s favourite would be the flower he’s named after. It feels like eight years instead of eight minutes as Luna waits, but eventually Gladio re-emerges with a neatly wrapped bundle of the aforementioned flowers in hand, sunny orange and yellow blossoms exploding from the tissue paper. He sets it down gently on the counter and chitchats as Luna pays.

With one steadying breath, Luna picks up the flowers and hands them right back to Gladio.

His thick brows scrunch together. “This ain’t how this usually works,” Gladio says with a chuckle.

“I’m well aware. However, these are a gift. For you,” Luna says, feeling a faint heat creep into her cheeks even as she resolves to maintain eye contact with Gladio.

His puzzled expression dissolves into a confident, broad smile. “You askin’ me on a date, Dr. Luna?”

“And if I were?”

Gladio’s answer takes less than a heartbeat. With flowers still clutched in one hand, he leans across the counter, cups Luna’s cheek in one broad palm, and kisses her gently on the lips. When he draws back, his amber eyes are practically sparkling.

“How’s tonight sound?”

“Wonderful,” Luna breathes. “I cleared my schedule in advance.”

The joy she feels hearing Gladio’s answering laugh, low and deep, could last her the rest of her life… but she’s glad it won’t have to.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are appreciated if you enjoyed. <3


End file.
